Page 74 of My Favorite Lost Cause
Which I was.
I don’t hate sex. I don’t dread sex. Yes, I want this to end because it’s…wrong. But I also don’t want it to end. Not unless it will start right back up again.
My legs spread wider. I’m so empty, so ready, grinding against thatlog—hard, long, thick—pressed to the cleft of my ass.
“Oh, fuck, Maren. You are so wet and tight for me. You are fucking dripping, swollen, dying to spread your legs for my cock, aren’t you?”
I’m not sure if he’s really asking, and I’m so close that I don’t need to answer.
His finger stops moving. “Admit it,” he demands.
“Yes,” I gasp, and he pushes the panties to the side and shoves two fingers inside me. Three quick pumps, hitting something so perfect and?—
“Oh God, Charlie…”
I come against his intrusive fingers. I come so hard that my knees bend as if I’ll fall to the floor, as if the only parts of me worth keeping upright are the ones he’s touching. He wraps a hand around my waist, holding me tight.
“That was exactly how I knew you’d be,” he says. “Wet, ready, submissive.”
I’m still trying to catch my breath. I want to argue that I’m not submissive, that it was simply an unusual situation, but…
I liked the way he took control. I liked how he made me answer him, how he threatened to withhold it if I didn’t.
He seems to understand some things about me that I do not.
I lean backward just enough to press my ass to the tented front of his jeans, and air hisses between his teeth. “You have no idea how bad I want to push inside you right now.”
“Then do it,” I demand, grinding backward.
“I’ve waited too goddamn long for this,” he replies. “Our first time is not going to be bent over a sink.”
He turns me to face him, his hand on my jaw, cradling my face. “I’m going to shower upstairs. Be in your bedready for melike a good little girl by the time I get there.”
He kisses me hard before I can even agree, groaning as I palm him. “Go,” he orders.
I should tell him he can’t just boss me around, but I’m already outside, walking to the cottage like a good little girl.
I get inside the door with the dogs at my feet. They go straight to their beds, tired from the long day. I haven’t showered since this morning, so I strip off my sundress and climb under the spray before it’s even gotten warm. I scrub myself, wondering how this will go tonight. It’s been so long since I was with someone new. What if I’m bad at it? What if I’ve lost my skills? What if every complaint Harvey ever had about myattitude, my body, or my sensuality was actually somewhat accurate?
The cottage door slams shut and I turn the water off. He’s already in bed when I emerge. I shut off the light, clutching the towel around me as I walk toward him, scarcely able to get a full breath.
With the moonlight pouring through the French glass doors, he’s clearly visible in the darkness, and I’m not sure what I expected of this moment, but it wasn’t this, because Charlie, who never takes anything seriously…is watching me walk toward him as if this is something he’s waited for his entire life. As if the fate of the world rests upon what is about to take place. I swallow audibly.
“We don’t have to, Mare.”
I drop the towel.
It’s as close as I can come to getting on my knees and begging for it. Unless he asks me to, and then I’d probably do that too.
He draws back the covers and pulls me in beside him, warm skin to warm skin, his fingertips trailing from the curve of my waist to the curve of my ass.
“You’re trembling,” he says. “Are you nervous?”
I shake my head. I was, but now it’s more anticipation than anything else.
“We really don’t have to do anything,” he whispers, so close now that his lips brush mine when he speaks.
“Yes,” I reply, pressing my mouth firmly to his, “we do.”
